Twilling didn’t present half the problem Kai feared. Walking out of the office, numb from incense and the glassy stares of painted kittens in the motivational prints that adorned the man’s walls, she realized she need not have worried. Twilling didn’t know Kai, barely knew Jace, wasn’t privy to inner-mountain gossip. Theology, he’d said, standing by the window—he didn’t have a proper desk, only three lecterns piled with papers where he stood to work—theological rigor was an asset his branch seldom possessed, and if Kai could convert a pilgrim using her skills in that area, this was to be celebrated, and by the way, he was glad to hear Kai patched things up with Ms. Batan, and he always felt it was a mistake to silo verticals, which phrase Kai understood but felt dirty for understanding. In short, he said, spreading hands, we might make a closer out of you yet. Who knows to what heights you might rise? He handed over the paperwork without fuss, once he found the right form and signed his name with a quill pen and a sleeve-flaring flourish.

The hardest part of the conversation had been to keep a straight face when Twilling’s verbiage swerved into the arcane and he began to invent new meanings for the word “leverage.” She rode the lift down from the office, self-satisfied, bobbing her head to the ghostly music of a steel drum.

When the lift reached the lobby, the doors opened and she saw Claude.

He waited straight backed on the edge of a leather couch, his face fixed in that even, distant stare watchmen and other Penitent survivors had, the one that seemed deeper than blind. The blank wall in front of him was painted cream. He wore his uniform shirt and pressed khakis and mirror-shined shoes. He didn’t look at his reflection in the patent leather.

Penitents stood guard outside the lobby’s glass doors. Three suited shamans squeezed past them into the alchemically cooled air.

Claude noticed her before she could decide whether to stay in the lift and hide.

“Kai!”

If he wanted her in an official capacity, the offices upstairs offered no protection; if he wanted her unofficially, she could just brush past. She walked as briskly as her limp allowed, her cane taps loud on the floor.

He cut her off at the doors. She tried to circle around him, but he blocked her path. “What do you want?” Not good, but better than her other options, most a variation on “so are you going to arrest me or what?”

He adopted that smile he thought was comforting. “We need to talk.”

“I have business.” She held the signed contract between them like a herald’s rod. “A client meeting. We can talk later.”

“I don’t want to make this official.”

“Did you come here to make it official?”